Grandma’s Mocha Cake

April 29, 2020

I can still hear the sound of the support for the table leaf being pulled into place; the wooden bar squeaked, the drop leaf creaked as it was raised into position. Years before, the clamp from a meat grinder had left its bite marks on the edge of the table. My grandmother sat at the center, my Mom to her right, and I sat to her left, squished into a nook between the refrigerator, the table, and the wall. It was luncheon in the 1970s and at the end was Sara Lee Torte, or what I knew as Grandma’s Mocha Cake. When she took it out of the freezer, a cloud of cool air drifted down to the table.

I haven’t had the cake in decades. The directions are ensconced in "A Book of Favorite Recipes," compiled by the Women’s Fellowship of the United Congregational Church of Westerly, Rhode Island, a spiral bound community fundraiser from the era before the internet and GoFundMe campaigns. My grandmother, Helen Kenneth (1904-1999), gave me a copy in 1988, when I was a new bride. This was the third edition, revised, of a recipe collection first gathered in 1947. The back of the cookbook includes helpful information on stain removal, measurement equivalencies, herb usage, and culinary substitutions. There is a chart on quantities of food to serve 100 people, back in a time when people gathered: twenty-four pounds of meatloaf, five gallons of scalloped potatoes, eighteen pies. “A personalized cook book,” an early page advertises, “is a gift that’s appreciated for all occasions.” Including pandemics.

The recipes are homey and practical; many are “easy” or “quick”; some are ostensibly magical – “Sauerkraut Surprise Cake,” “Mystery Glazed Chicken,” and several “Impossible” pies where Bisquick transforms a one-bowl mix of ingredients into dessert. It’s still my go-to source for refrigerator pickles and coleslaw. My grandmother was a frequent contributor, mostly in the main dish section. I notice that her dessert recipes involve name-brand ingredients, suggesting back-of-the-box origins. My mother shared recipes, as did I—my contribution a dish I made in college when I was feeling fancy: chicken with wine and mushrooms. I suppose that’s my first publication. I’m betting we were the only three-generation contributors. The realization made me think of colonial era “receipt” books, passed mother to daughter and on down the line.

Memories of my grandmother revolve around multi-generation dining. I can’t for the life of me recall what my mother and I ate for lunch at my grandmother’s, except for that mocha cake shared between the three of us. Young, and with that metabolism of yore, I had the biggest slice as my grandmother and mother nursed cups of coffee. My grandmother kept tiny tablets of saccharine in a small ceramic pot; she’d lift them out with a tiny plastic spoon and drop them into her coffee. Today the pot sits above my kitchen sink; I put my engagement ring in it when I clean the oven or paint. When I was even younger, at the December holidays, my grandmother, mother, and I would have afternoon tea at grandma’s church fair. We ate tiny sandwiches with the crust cut off, singular cookies, and minuscule brownies as we sat at a cloth-covered card table in metal folding chairs. I probably sipped Hawaiian Punch. I felt elegant and grown-up as my grandmother’s neighbors and church friends stopped by the table to say hello. I recognized some of their names as I paged through the cookbook: Del Connors, Margaret Clancy, the latter my grandmother’s next-door neighbor whose son (or grandson or nephew) once taught me a dirty word and told me my grandmother would be pleased to hear me use it. She was not.

I made the cake last night—slicing a twenty-first-century “family sized” Sara Lee pound cake into a more manageable portion for two, substituting espresso powder for the instant coffee I don’t have, eating the extra chocolate chips that spilled from the bag. The frosting is sweeter than I recall; my taste for sugar, like my metabolism, has changed over the years. I added chopped strawberries when serving, a thin attempt to keep fruit in our housebound diet. A cloud of cold followed the cake from the freezer to the table.

Ingredients
10 ¾ oz. Sara Lee pound cake
6 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 tsp. instant coffee
1 c. sour cream

Directions
Slice cake into 4 slices – lengthwise.

Frosting: Melt chocolate chips with instant coffee in double boiler over hot water. When melted, remove boiler from heat and add the sour cream. Mix well.

Frost between each layer of cake, top and all sides. Place on the cardboard top and place all on foil. Put in freezer to set the frosting. When set, wrap foil securely and keep in freezer. Remove from freezer one hour before serving.

Elizabeth DeWolfe is Professor of History and co-founder of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of New England (Biddeford, Maine).